Tom Knox - Bible of the Dead

The nurse was standing with the rubber mask, ready to hand it over.

‘And that means?’ Jake grasped at the last shreds of this reality. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It is therefore at least arguable that atheism is a form of dementia . Consider that! Atheism is a kind of psychosis, a mental illness . The healthy mind is, very very truly, a mind that believes.’ An electronic chime rang across the room. ‘OK Jake, that’s the signal. The temperature is now right, we need to do this… Right now. We can’t wait any longer.’

‘Wait, I want to know.’ Even as the rubber mask of anaesthesia was clamped over his mouth, Jake felt the cry of a question in his Godless mind. ‘I still don’t know why? Why are we meant to believe?’

But his question was met by the black silence of unconsciousness.

‘How do you feel?’

‘The same. Different. I don’t know. ’

Jake was awake. Sipping a hot drink. He had been awake for an hour, in the dark, but now the lights were on, and Fishwick was gazing at him with a quizzical expression.

‘Perhaps you need to see… to go outside. To assess your reactions.’

Jake knew what this meant: go and look at the world, go and see Chemda. Find out whether his guilty soul had been retrieved from erasure.

He stood. Again he felt an odd composure, a sweet stability; not the quailing weakness he expected, following serious surgery. Did this mean the surgery had worked? Or simply done nothing?

At least he could talk. He wasn’t a drooling fool.

A loose jacket slung over his shirtsleeves, he stepped out of the room. At the end was that dazzling silver oblong: the glass door that gave onto the terrace, the door that opened to the truth.

He walked and pressed the glass and he breathed the thin light air of Balagezong. Julia and Chemda were seated at the tables and staring his way. In a crushing second he realized: he felt the same, he felt nothing. He felt nothing for Chemda.

The truth was so anguished he couldn’t bear to describe it. His face must have spoken eloquently enough: Chemda turned away, she put a hand to her eyes, disguising her emotions. Jake didn’t know if she was crying or not. He didn’t especially care. The sun shone down. No one said anything. There was nothing to be said; nothing was ever going to be said, ever again. Faint cirrus clouds striped the sky beyond White Buddha Mountain.

Within hours of the surgery’s completion Jake was able to confirm this cold realization – the operation had totally failed: the sense of detachment remained just as before, the feeling that he existed in a world where all music had been subtly removed.

But at least he hadn’t died; or been calamitously lobotomized. And the guilt about his mother and his sister, that was still gone.

The first days of his recovery he spent lying in bed or sitting quietly on the terrace, with Chemda, feeling awkward. Sometimes Chemda tried to smile, to touch him, to kiss him. But his inert reactions eventually dissuaded her. And in time she simply retreated to her room.

And left him alone.

Next day the soldiers came. The Chinese army, and then the Chinese police. This was less alarming than they had feared. As Julia had promised, Rouvier had done a politic and convincing job, through the French, Canadian and UK governments, in ensuring that they were saved from custody; and in neutralizing the complexities.

Rouvier was apparently aided by the attitude of Beijing. The Chinese surely wanted to cut a deal; they were evidently embarrassed by the whole business. Jake even suspected the Chinese had actively held off from taking over the lab complex – so as to let events play out; so that Beijing was ultimately untainted by the whole scandal. With that outcome the authorities could plead a plausible ignorance – and flush the whole unsightly business down the latrine of history.

Jake saw this desire in the way the officials behaved. The police were brisk and efficient – yet eerily detached, un interested. They questioned them several times, and questioned Fishwick, they took photos of the ‘crime scene’ – and they took away equipment for tests, but it was all rather cursory. Jake was sure that the photos and interviews would be simply trashed, at a convenient moment.

And then the specialists and the soldiers departed and it was just the ordinary police. One of them was particularly friendly.

Jake was sitting alone on the terrace, sipping his fine puer-cha tea. The young, smiling, English-speaking Chinese policeman came over and looked at Jake’s scar and said that Jake was allowed to stay a few more days in Balagezong, for ‘rehabilitation and recuperation’ – two words the man found very difficult to pronounce. But then, the policeman implied, it was definitely expected that Chemda and Jake and Julia would make themselves strangers anyway. Go back to Bangkok. Go home. Go anywhere. Just go a long way from China.

Then the policeman made the first and only reference, albeit oblique, to the unspoken deal. He gestured across the mountainscape and smiled and said ‘You are a photographer no? Maybe you should do some photographs of the beautiful gorges here. Publish them. This is the only reason to come here. This is all people need to know, yes?’

Jake had a blanket over his knees, like an invalid by the beach. He nodded. He knew what this remark meant. Their silence was indeed being bought. The Chinese wanted the troublesome foreigners gone, but they would only let them go – in return for silence. The policeman smiled again.

‘People do not want to know about the Old China. They need to know about the new China! No? And the National Park of Shangri-La Gorge is coming! That is what you must tell people.’

‘Shangri-La?’

‘Yes. Xiengeli-la.’ He laughed. ‘Shangri-la. The name is taken from the book by a British man I believe? The secret Himalayan paradise. It is good idea – good brand. It will change the lives of these peasants.’

‘They’ll build a proper road?’

‘Yes yes! And many toilets, and cafe. Shops! And why not? This is most beautiful place in the world so there must be toilets and cafes and buses and shops. It will be wonderful. This is progress!’

He grinned. ‘And now I say goodbye to you. There is last village truck leaving for Zhongdian in four days. You must take that. We need to begin the demolishing of this…’ He winced with distaste. ‘This laboratory. The army will return to do this job. So we can build the park.’

‘Yes,’ Jake said, sensing the resignation in his own voice. ‘We’ll go on the last truck. Thankyou.’

The man turned and briefly saluted and the hollowness returned.

But another person was hovering.

Fishwick.

He pulled up a seat besides Jake. He poured himself a glass of puer-cha.

‘I’m also leaving this afternoon. With the authorities.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘As I hoped, they have agreed to let me work… with epileptics.’

Fishwick stirred his long spoon in his tea.

‘Jake. I just wanted to say something. Do you recall… the last question you asked me, just before the surgery?’

‘Yes. I do. Why are we meant to believe?’ Jake squinted at the American. ‘You have an answer?’

‘Perhaps. Perhaps.’ He hesitated, then pointed with his long steel spoon and said: ‘Look at that mountain. The beauty of it. It is eloquent, is it not?’

‘Sorry?’

Fishwick momentarily closed his eyes. And he spoke quietly:

‘The answer to your question only came to me a few weeks ago. I was standing by the stupa, Bala stupa, under the Holy Mountain, and somehow it dawned. I saw. I realized that perhaps the God module evolved for the most profound and obvious reason of all.’